There is a growing research literature on the ‘Neuroscience of Love’. But what exactly is this ‘love’ that is being studied?
Sociologist Gabriel Abend asks these questions in a new paper called The Love of Neuroscience published in Sociological Theory. Last year I discussed one of Abend’s previous papers which asked more general questions about how neuroscientists define the objects they study. In the new paper, Abend looks specifically at ‘love’ and how this word has been understood by neuroscientists.
Abend focusses on fMRI studies of love, such as the highly cited Bartels and Zeki (2000). In these experiments, participants are typically shown face images of various people, one of whom they love (either as a romantic partner, or a child) while the others are unloved controls (friends, celebrities, or random people.) The difference in the fMRI response to the loved, vs. unloved, faces is taken to reflect the neural ...
